Day 13: No Phone Thursday

November 14, 2014

I left my phone at home today by mistake. I was on my way to work and I thought about turning around and driving home to grab it, then I remembered that I am writing this paper on nomophobia. So I thought that this would be a good exercise in going one day without my phone (which I’ve done lots of times, just not as consciously as I did today).

Anyways, one day without my phone. I didn’t miss any important phone calls and I didn’t miss any earth shattering status updates on Facebook. So yeah, I can survive one day without my phone.

It did force me to call my ex-husband, however. Normally when we communicate with each other we text each other. There’s a story behind that, of course. When we first got divorced, he would walk the kids out to my car when I came to pick them up. We would make awkward small talk. One day one of us was picking up the kids at the others house and one of us said something that shouldn’t have been said in front of the kids. And I realized that my kids shouldn’t have to watch their parents behave badly in front of them like that.

So since I didn’t think either of us (I’m being honest, here. We both did and said some not so wise things) were capable of cordially interacting in front of the kids, I told him that if he wanted to talk to me; that he should email me, write me a note, or text me. I eliminated phone calls, too, and resorted to voicemail. This is how it’s been between us for the past almost 3 years now. We haven’t had a full conversation about anything in I don’t know how long.

Anyways, so since I forgot my phone today and needed to tell him something, I realized that I was going to have to call him on a “normal” landline phone, from work. I couldn’t use my normal method of communication; that is, a text message.

Because I never call from work he must have been caught off guard and rather than letting it go to voicemail like he normally would, he answered the phone. It’s been ages since I’ve heard his voice on the phone.

And then our thirty second conversation was up. Huh. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

So this is what I was thinking: Today a friend laid her husband to rest. I bet she would give anything to have one more conversation with him; to hear his voice again.

Me: I send my once husband’s calls straight to voicemail sometimes because I don’t want to hear his voice.

Anyways, we don’t get along for a lot of good/not good reasons. I feel like that is kind of an excuse. For one thing, we have the capability to get along. I know that we do, because we didn’t always not get along. Obviously. We got married and had kids.

But for now, it doesn’t seem possible, and that memory of getting along is so far out that it seems weirder to imagine getting along. That’s the weirdest thing sometimes about being divorced.